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celebrated Irish general,* having first performed many remark- 
able feats at Tara in the king’s palace, undertook and succeeded 
in accomplishing this apparently hopeless task within a twelve- 
month ; and in this poem is said to have related to St. Patrick 
the result of his mission. There is, perhaps, no other example in 
the Irish language of the same extent containing so many 
words — names of animals — of which the meaning is not known ; 
and there are but few poems of so many lines requiring the 
same amount of topographical annotation. The names of 
several animals are, as stated, untranslatable ; either the 
animals themselves have become extinct in Ireland, or they are 
now known by other names than those preserved in the MS.’ 
As a specimen we quote the following lines : — f 
* I then went forth to search the lands, 
To see if I could redeem my chief, 
And soon returned to noble Tara 
With the ransom that Cormac required. 
* Two foxes from Slibh Cuilinn [co. Armagh], 
Two wild oxen from Burren [co. Clare], 
Two swans from the dark wood of Gahhran,f 
And two cuckoos from the wood of Fordrum.’ 
The most remarkable line, however, so far as concerns our 
present inquiry, is that which relates to the bringing of two 
Roebucks ( Earbog ) from Luachair Deaghaidh, i. e., Slieve 
Lougher, Co. Kerry. 
We are not informed upon what authority the word Earbog 
is rendered ‘ Roebuck.’ It seems not a little curious that the 
Irish in the ninth century should have had a name for an 
animal which, it is supposed, was never indigenous to Ireland ; 
at the same time, it should be observed that the Irish name, 
Earbog, closely resembles the Gaelic names for this animal 
(Earb, Earba, Earb-boc) in use at the present day. 
It is worthy of remark, too, that in the Museum of the Royal 
Irish Academy, amongst the collection of Irish Red-deer horns, 
is a small specimen catalogued as * No. 45, a small shed horn, 
apparently of the Roebuck, presented by Joshua Ferguson, Esq.’ 
Not having seen this specimen, we can express no opinion upon 
it ; but if it be really the horn of a Roebuck found in Ireland, 
its history would bo worth tracing. 
* See Annals of the Four Masters, under a.d. 286. 
t A translation of this poem appeared in the Dublin University Magazine, 
March 1854, and the Irish version, with the translation opposite, is given in 
the seventh volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1859, 
pp. 184-191. 
\ Now Gowran, co. Kilkenny. 
